So Comes Snow After Fire

7.vi

Tauriel stood with the mug of tea clasped in her hands, its floral fragrance drifting up around her, and she surveyed the main platform of her treetop home. She would be leaving it tomorrow, for only the second time in her life. She hadn't known, the first time she'd left, that it was even a farewell. She had simply not come back.

And now, well, it didn't feel so much like a goodbye since the place was no longer where she belonged. She had lived in this particular maple for the last hundred years, and she knew every knot, branch, and leaf. Sometimes, it had seemed not so much a home as a friend. She still loved it, but she didn't need to remain here to do so.

She glanced over her cushioned sofa, the hanging lanterns, the shelves holding a decanter set and the book of lays she had borrowed from Legolas and never had a chance to return. They would all be here for her to return to, if she needed them. She wasn't sure if she would need them. The open sky, a borrowed bed, shared firelight and the laughter of new friends—these things were enough for her.

Tauriel turned away and went up the short stairway to the upper platform, her bedchamber. Her things were all packed into her traveling chest, though she'd left her nightgown on top. A nightgown, she had discovered, was a small but important luxury that made the difference between feeling lost and unprepared or being welcome and provided for. She laughed as she undressed, remembering the short dwarven robe she had been loaned in Erebor. Someone had known the importance of the gesture, and she had been grateful for the kind thought. Still, she was glad to be back in a garment that reached past her knees.

She finished her tea in bed, sitting against the headboard with her legs drawn up. The warm drink was not quite as calming as she had hoped it would be. She was, she finally admitted, excited to be returning to the world tomorrow. Giddy, even. Certainly that was from the opportunity ahead of her: she had never been given so much authority as she had now in representing the Greenwood's interests to everyone at the Lonely Mountain, both on and under it. But even more, it was from the certainty of seeing him again.

Setting aside the empty mug, she stretched out under the light coverlet.

How was Kíli? Had he made peace with his uncle yet? She prayed he had, for his own sake ahead of hers. And his mother—she was there now, or would be soon. Tauriel smiled to herself, imagining the happiness Kíli's mother surely felt, finding both of her sons safe and well. She wished she could be there to see the reunion; she barely remembered what it was to have mother or father of her own.

Kíli, she knew, had lost his father at an age little younger than she had been when she had lost both parents. Yet grief had certainly not dampened his spirits, nor, indeed, made him seem wary in any other way. It had not made him cautious, either with his life or his heart. She was fascinated by how truly unafraid he was. He had declared himself in love with her, when he had known that any elf surely would have refused such an offer from a dwarf. He had not been afraid to believe she was more than any elf.

Tauriel had believed for a long time that she was fortunate not to have fallen in love. She needn't worry about the risk of loss and heartbreak that came when you cared for someone. But now she wondered, as she lay listening to the whispering of the leaves around her, if she had somehow unknowingly denied herself the possibility of falling in love. She had never been drawn to any man who noticed her, and thought it was because none of them had ever been what she truly wanted. But maybe she had never given any of them a chance to be, since it was safer not to let someone matter to you. It made you vulnerable, and Tauriel had always known she had to be strong so that she—and her people—would remain safe.

Of course, she had never supposed she could want a dwarf. And so Kíli had slipped in under her guard and settled himself in her heart before she could fight him.

And now, she knew she was glad he had. It was ironic, certainly, that she had protected herself just to love someone whose one certainty was death. No. That was not true. She was equally certain he offered her an experience of life beyond any she had known: he loved her and—Valar help her—she loved him.

I love him.

The words, at last, felt right. She had known she was working towards this admission for a long time, perhaps since the moment she had fought not to cry as he had pressed the runestone into her hand and pushed off across the lake. Tauriel wasn't sure if it had taken her so long to understand the truth because love, like any living thing, was at first so fragile and small. Or had she needed to overcome some unknown barrier within herself before she could know?

It didn't matter. She had found him, or he had found her, and if a dragon and an entire orc army hadn't been able to separate them, then what did even the dwarf king think he could do? she asked herself with drowsy satisfaction.

Awareness ebbed away from her like a gentle tide, and Tauriel found sleep at last.